Contact Information
Department of Economics
Northwestern University
2211 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Phone: 609-627-9091
E-mail: c.pizzimenti@u.northwestern.edu
Education
Ph.D., Economics, Northwestern University, 2026 (expected)
MA, Economics, Northwestern University, 2021
M.Sc., Economics, Università Bocconi, 2019
B.Sc., Finance, Università Bocconi, 2016
Primary Fields of Specialization
Macroeconomics
Secondary Fields of Specialization
Finance
Curriculum Vitae
Job Market Paper
“Inventories as collateral”
This paper examines how using inventories as collateral mitigates rather than amplifies the effects of financial frictions on business cycle fluctuations. Using aggregate demand and supply shocks, I document that inventories comove positively with sales following both shocks. I develop a model where firms face borrowing constraints tied to inventory holdings. Unlike traditional capital-based collateral that generates counter-cyclical inventory behavior, inventory-based constraints produce pro-cyclical inventories: higher production simultaneously meets demand and expands borrowing capacity. Loan-level evidence from the Global Financial Crisis confirms this mechanism: firm-bank relationships were 5.9 percentage points more likely to survive the credit crunch if backed by inventories. Pledging inventories ties borrowing capacity to current operational performance, similarly to earnings-based based covenants on unsecured debt. I compare firms using inventories as collateral to those facing earnings-based covenants: both exhibit nearly identical responses, suggesting that collateral constraints and earningsbased covenants generate similar incentives when collateral is tied to operational assets. These findings provide a novel perspective on how financial frictions shape business cycles and resolve the long-standing puzzle of pro-cyclical inventory behavior.
Other Research Papers
“Ample Reserves for Whom? The Role of Foreign Banks in U.S. Monetary Policy Implementation”, with Junko Oguri
Awarded: 2025 ECB Lamfalussy Research Fellowship
This paper studies how foreign banks constrain the Federal Reserve’s ability to shrink its balance sheet under the ample-reserves framework. We show that foreign banks, despite their smaller footprint in assets, loans, and deposits, hold a disproportionate share of reserves due to regulatory and organizational factors. Using Call Reports and high-frequency data, we document that foreign banks exhibit more elastic reserve demand than domestic banks, absorb most reserve supply shocks, and sharply reduce holdings at quarter-ends due to regulatory reporting incentives (window-dressing). We then develop a model where foreign banks endogenously determine the kink in the aggregate reserve demand curve. The model shows that uncertainty from foreign banks’ window-dressing behavior raises the precautionary reserve buffer that the Fed must maintain. Our analysis provides both empirical and theoretical evidence that the distribution of reserves across bank types, not just their aggregate level, shapes monetary policy implementation under quantitative tightening.
Work in Progress
“Risk-taking in U.S. public pension funds: the role of non mark-to-market investments”
I study the impact of the secular decline in interest rates on the asset allocation decisions of U.S. public pension funds. Over the past two decades, these funds have substantially increased their exposure to alternative assets, rising from 10% to 30% of total portfolios as safe rates have fallen. I investigate the mechanisms driving this shift, with a particular focus on the role of non-mark-to-market valuation of alternative investments and the regulatory environment governing public pension funds. My analysis highlights how prolonged low interest rates and institutional features jointly shape portfolio choices in the public pension sector.
Publications
“Brigandage and the Political Legacy of Monarchical Legitimacy in Southern Italy”, with Matteo Ruzzante, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Volume 235, July 2025.
Political legitimacy plays a pivotal role in securing the effectiveness and longevity of a governing system, yet it can be eroded by the way rulers handle popular uprisings. This paper studies whether a historical shock in the legitimacy of monarchic rule can have long-term, intergenerational consequences on political attitudes. The unification of Italy ignited a violent reaction against the new ruler in its southern provinces known as the “Great Brigandage”. We use fixed effects regressions with a wide set of controls and an instrumental variable approach based on military suitability of the terrain in order to show that, ceteris paribus, municipalities exposed to brigandage in the 1861–1870 period had lower turnout in the 1946 Institutional Referendum and were significantly less likely to vote for the survival of the monarchy. Heterogeneity analysis leveraging a spatial discontinuity in martial law suggests that anti-monarchic sentiment likely stemmed from the collective memory of brigandage repression. We interpret our findings as evidence that latent preferences toward political systems are endogenously shaped by historical events and can be brought to the surface by changes in the institutional environment.
Teaching
Econ 310-1: Intermediate Microeconomics, Winter 2025
Econ 202: Introduction to Microeconomics, Spring 2024
Econ 308: Money and Banking, Winter 2023; Winter 2024
Econ 201: Introduction to Macroeconomics, Fall 2022; Spring 2023; Fall 2023
References
Prof. Martin Eichenbaum (Committee Chair)
Prof. Nicolas Crouzet
Prof. Matthew Rognlie